Contour lines and causing crashes

Geography is important. Take the Slovak Republic as an example, there isn't a contour line anywhere to be seen. It's flat. From end-to-end, just flat. Flat is boring. It's straight roads. It's bland horizons. It's not at all conducive towards anything remotely creative. And it is, perhaps why Slovakia is so utterly crap. All the buildings, including the little houses in the villages in the countryside and square blocks, have not an angle in them except at the square corners. A splash of paint wouldn't go amiss either and graffiti doesn't count in this regard. In fact, even the graffiti is dull; it's neither creative nor colourful. Just meaningless words (admittedly, they often carried those strange adornments mentioned before), but they all in the same black paint. For heaven's sake, you just wish someone would make an effort. Then there's the main city, Bratislava, which is also crap. Call it the capital of bland if you will. Just tall, square, grey buildings. There's nothing that can remotely be described as architecture - except, of course, the Castle, which can be seen for miles before you enter the city, but just didn't seem worth the effort. Dumplings; that's the staple diet of the country. And they're dull too. Properly dull it was. Then there's the countryside; even the trees look as if they've given up trying. Not that there are many trees; just ones planted next to the road, others to partition fields. The fields appear equally demoralised by their own existence. It's not as if Slovakia is incredibly huge; it's probably about 100 miles across - but that's just too much space for so much blandness. Immediately driving into Hungary, you notice a difference. The first are the hills, right there on the horizon, not that far away at all. Then there's the houses, someone's making an effort - they aren't all the same and there is definitely an attempt at gardening going on. You can see it in there language too, they don't have to dress it up as much as the Slavs (is that what one calls folk from the Slovak Republic?) do. Sure, there's a the odd dot on top of some letters, but there are no obscure v's above every vowel. Then there's the road that heads up into the hills; it gets all curly-wurly. Suddenly there's just forest - because you can't plant fields on slopes like these. There's contours everywhere. Paulo was in his element; all that revving and braking. Lilith, who at the best of times can be described as melancholy, had been positively morose in Slovakia but didn't say much in the early part of Hungary. She might have been upset with the sudden excitement; or, admittedly, it might have been that there were no turns that she is programmed to mention as this was simply, one long - delightfully windy and hilly - road to all the way to Bood-a-Pest, as she likes to pronounce it. But she got her own back; she brought us in through the less-affluent side of town. The nightmares that were Leipzig and Bratislava are still very recent and that part of Budapest is very, very similar. All the joys of the road vanished... but only briefly. Nevertheless, it was nice to know that Lilith hides a sense of humour. She has remained rigidly austere since then, although I suspect she may have chuckled to herself when I left the car to explore the sights. We parked in front of some major landmark - looked government-ish, might have been the town hall for all anyone knows - which is close to the castle that Lilith had directed us to. I left the car after unhooking and hiding all the gadgets around the dashboard - including herself - and headed for the pedestrian-crossing to get to the afore-mentioned castle. It was midday and the traffic was quite busy. I waited for a while, but the drivers here are similar to those in Prague and have scant regard for anyone other than themselves. When a gap opened, I shot across to the middle of the road and stopped because the traffic going the other way was equally busy. That's when everything went into slow-motion; and I remember it vividly: An old man who was driving towards me, noticed me and made to slow down to let me pass - it was a pedestrian-crossing and he was doing the right thing. The bloke behind him, however, was not used to such grandiose displays of common decency and didn't have time to brake. If ever there's a feeling of helplessness, then this was it... And I was the cause! The inevitable crash happened and it was loud. One minute, there was this old man smiling at me and making gestures with his hand to motion me to walk on; the next he - must have seen my expression - his face changed and his head was thrown forward. I swear, it'll be a miracle if he doesn't have whiplash. The bloke who did the crashing was the first to react; he was out of his car, making apologetic motions with his hands while heading for the driver he had hit. He, at this stage, was getting out of his car, still stunned but looking okay. I offered him some apologies too, and he seemed to understand my English, because he replied: "Nou Praab-lem". Then he and the other driver got to discussing the damage, which did not seem too bad considering how thundering that crash was. Very surreptitiously, I faded into the park nearby and headed towards the castle; feeling very guilty about doing so, but having no intention of becoming a witness and having to return to Budapest. As far as I'm concerned it's one more city I can cross off my bucket-list. Been there, done that; that kind of thing. Besides, if I never have to drive through a geography-less Slovakia again, then that would be too soon. The rest of the visit was uneventful. Saw the sights, photographed them. Walked many, many miles, but it was pleasant. And I spilled my left-over food at McDonalds and felt very silly cleaning it up. As far as I'm concerned today is done and tomorrow it's off to Transylvania. That's got mountains - which is just about as much geography as anyone could possibly desire.